


the downpour sends its love

by ohkeiji



Series: BokuAka Week 2016 [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (mentioned not the main focus), Afterlife, Angst, BokuAka Week, Canon Compliant, Car Accidents, Future Fic, M/M, Rain, they are old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohkeiji/pseuds/ohkeiji
Summary: The rain always reminded him of Koutarou.
(BokuAka Week Day 3: Rain)





	

**Author's Note:**

> warnings again for car accidents, mentions of injury, death, and like one swear word
> 
> if you squint its canon-compliant i swear i mentioned volleyball somewhere

The rain always reminded him of Koutarou.

 

It was funny, because when someone mentions rain you usually think about deep metaphors, psychological questions, and sentimental memories. In some cases, those did relate to Koutarou-- but not many really got to see that side of the man. Keiji was a lucky one, he guessed.

 

Most knew Koutarou as simple-minded, loud-mouthed guy who still joked around despite his age. His hair had faded until it was entirely white (Keiji had to convince him not to dye it again), his broad frame had shrunk since high school, but his golden eyes were sharp as ever, and his smile still held all the genuinity it would have had years ago.

 

Koutarou was more like the sun than rain, Keiji had thought. He was bright enough to blind a man. That was before he knew him, before he dated and married the man and remained together for decades. Maybe the deep side of Koutarou, the one who lay in bed for hours at a time pondering over questions without answers, or the man who wrote journal after journal of his thoughts and theories-- that Koutarou was the sentimental, metaphorical rain.

 

Perhaps that’s why he saw the irony as Koutarou lay in his hospital bed, the heart monitor’s consistent beeping not enough to block out the soft noises of the rain outside.

 

The car accident had happened in late April-- a hit and run. The car had most likely skidded on the slick pavement, but Keiji was too distressed to be angry; that could come later. 

 

He sat outside his husband’s hospital room, his face expressionless as he drummed his fingers against his leg. His fingers, once graceful and slim, now had prominent veins popping up through pale skin and wrinkly knuckles. The doctor came over to tell Keiji he could see Koutarou. His knee ached as he stood and walked into the room.

 

Keiji had trouble looking at Koutarou’s face as he sat next to the hospital bed. He looked at his hands instead, calloused, broad hands that had held him together for so long. After taking a few deep inhales, he risked a glance at Koutarou-- the entire right side of his face was covered in gauze, hiding deep cuts and scratches from the shattered car window. His eye was swollen, his face solemn, and Keiji found a tear slipping down his cheek.

 

He knew this could happen. The both of them were getting old, Keiji’s aches and pains were getting worse, and Koutarou’s mind wasn’t quite as sharp as it used to be. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

 

The doctor told him Koutarou didn’t have too long-- there were broken bones and internal bleeding that they couldn’t stop fast enough.

 

Keiji didn’t wipe his tears, instead placing his hand on Koutarou’s cheek that was free of gauze and bandages. He blinked a few times, trying to get rid of the blurriness in his vision from crying. His throat hurt from the lump he had been trying to ignore, and his hand was trembling slightly.

 

“Koutarou.” Keiji’s voice came out scratchy, and he had to clear his throat before he tried again. “Koutarou. I wish… I wish you weren’t here right now. And… God, this is harder than I thought it would be.” Keiji managed a small smile as he gazed fondly at his lover. “You would have just made a dumb joke there, wouldn’t you?” He choked out a short laugh. “I don’t want to see you go. You’ve been with me for so long…” Keiji had to take a moment, inhaling deeply to keep himself from crying more. “I love you. I’ve loved you for years, Koutarou. Thank you for our life together.”

 

The downpour outside drowned out Keiji’s soft words, but not the long, on-going beep of the heart monitor.

 

-

 

Koutarou wasn’t sure why it was raining in heaven, but he had other things to worry about.

 

He wasn’t even sure if he could really call it heaven-- after all, his best friend Tetsurou was with him, and Tetsurou had done some pretty devilish things in his life. So maybe a better term was simply the afterlife.

 

Tetsurou had been fairly brief in his explanation. The afterlife consisted of your soul, which remembered your life on earth. You could interact with other souls that you knew in your previous life, and your person takes the form of whatever your soul is feeling. It was dependent of what your soul felt and who you were interacting with, Tetsurou explained.

 

That was when Koutarou got confused and stopped listening, instead trying to focus on his surroundings. Everything was a bit blurry, a bit out of focus, and colors shifted and the light changed angles every other second (were there seconds in the afterlife?). Koutarou found the slight chaos almost comforting, though Keiji would have hated it.

 

Keiji… “Hey, Tetsu?” Koutarou turned to look at his friend. Right now, Tetsurou was looking like he did in college, with the spikey hair he couldn’t get a brush through and the baggy sweatpants he spilled many cups of coffee on.

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Where’s Keiji?” Koutarou tilted his head to the side.

 

Tetsurou’s face fell for a moment before he pulled himself together again. “Um…” The taller one rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s not dead yet, Kou.”

 

“He… isn’t?” Koutarou had to take a moment to process the new information. “Wait, how did I die again?”

 

The other man had a pained expression. “You got in an accident, man. A hit and run. The damage was brutal, the doctors couldn’t do much to save you. Keiji was with you when you died…” Tetsurou shook his head as he waved his hand in front of him. An odd mist-screen appeared, and Tetsurou pushed it towards the other. 

 

The screen hovered in front of Koutarou, showing him what almost looked like a recording of an old television show. The man watched intently; the screen showed him cars colliding, a body in a bed-- wait, that was him, that was his body!-- then a whole group of people were surrounding the bed until they all left, then someone else came in and--

 

“Keiji!” Koutarou whispered. He could only stare as he listened to his husband’s words. After the heart monitor stopped beating, the ‘video’ ended.

 

He took a moment before looking up at Tetsurou. “So.... so Keiji is still alive?”

 

His friend nodded. “But you can still watch over him from here, if you want. Just think of the screen appearing in front of you, and what you want to see, and it appears.”

 

_ Keiji, Keiji, what is he doing right now, is he alright? _

 

With a wave of his hand, mist appeared, and Koutarou put his face much closer than necessary to look at his lover’s face. Keiji looked solemn, more so than normal in his all black attire, but he was blinking more than normal, too--

 

_ Oh. _ Koutarou connected the dots: he was blinking because he was about to  _ cry _ , and he was wearing black because he was at a  _ funeral _ . Before he could ask whose funeral it was, he saw his body in a casket. The screen flickered before disappearing, and Koutarou took in a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

 

“Man, that’s  _ freaky _ .” He shook his head before looking back up at Tetsurou. “I’ll… I’ll check back later.” Koutarou forced a smile. “But Tetsu, dude, you need to fill me in! It’s been what-- four years?”

 

Tetsurou’s posture relaxed a bit as he responded. “I don’t know, man, time passes weird here. But boy, there’s a whole lotta funky shit here!”

 

The two gradually relaxed, Koutarou getting his mind off of what he had seen as he caught up with his best friend who had actually only died three years ago, not four (Koutarou was never good with dates or years, honestly).

 

-

 

Keiji died peacefully in his sleep on a cloudy night, fifteen months after his husband had passed. His adopted son, Akio, was the one who found him in bed, unresponsive and not breathing. 

 

All that day and into the night, it poured rain.

 

-

 

Hands on his shoulders made Keiji’s eyes open, and he blinked a few times, trying to focus his vision on the blurry figure in front of him.

 

“Keiji! Keiji! Keiji!” A voice chanted, shaking said man as the person spoke repeatedly. The curly-haired man groaned, pushing a hand at the person in front of him. “Man, it’s been sixty years since I’ve seen him like this…” The same voice muttered quietly, before speaking up again.

 

“C’mon, it’s been ages! You can sleep later-- wait, do we sleep here?” Keiji’s vision finally focused, and he couldn’t stifle his gasp as he took in the man in front of him.

 

“Koutarou?” This man-- no, this couldn’t possibly be Keiji’s husband, except, wait, no; Koutarou’s hair was sticking up and back to it’s two-toned streaks, and he looked exactly like a Koutarou in his late teens. Keiji could have guessed he was about to play a match, back at Fukurodani with the whole team. “Am I... ?”

 

“You’re dead!” Young-Koutarou cheered, but sombered right afterwards. “Wait, no, I probably shouldn’t be too excited about that…”

 

Keiji tilted his head to the side, a confused frown on his face. “Why do you look so young?” Was all he could say.

 

“Oh!” Koutarou smiled, reaching out a hand to touch Keiji’s cheek. Keiji surprised himself by leaning into it-- he hadn’t realized how touch-starved he felt after his husband’s death. “In the afterlife, you see whoever it is at the point where you have the best memories with them, but it changes! Like when you first showed up and you were sleeping, or maybe not sleeping? But whenever your eyes were closed, you were as old as you were when you had to say goodbye to me.” Koutarou’s big grin dropped, and his hand slipped from his partner’s cheek to instead wrap around his shoulders to hug Keiji. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I didn’t want to leave you.”

 

Keiji pulled away from the hug to look at Koutarou with serious grey eyes. “Don’t apologize for something you can’t help, Koutarou.” He murmured. The two made eye contact, and Keiji drank everything in-- he was dead, apparently, standing in the afterlife with his lover’s arms wrapped tightly around him. It wasn’t too bad, surprisingly.

 

Koutarou just shook his head before continuing. “I still feel bad, but anyways… Now, you look like how you did when you were thirty, or maybe mid-thirties, probably…”

 

Keiji raised an eyebrow. “Thirty?”

 

The older man nodded firmly. “Yeah. You were still just as pretty as before, but so much more mature, you know? We talked everything out, we got married, even though I had to quit volleyball you were still there for me.” Koutarou took Keiji’s hand, holding on tightly as he intertwined their fingers. “It was a good time. But you keep sort of… shifting, I guess? You’ve gone through a few different ages since we’ve started talking, which sounds really weird but honestly isn’t that weird, but I think that’s just because I’ve loved you all my life.” He tacked on the last words like they were his final thoughts.

 

The other man simply stared, momentarily stunned silent by Koutarou’s words. “Our whole life?”

 

Koutarou nodded firmly. “Even with arguments or disagreements, there will always be a part of me that loves you.”

 

“Even as the rain pours down, we can’t drown.” Keiji smiled softly. “I’ve always loved you, Koutarou.”

 

The rain came down from up above, but neither of the men noticed as they leaned in closer than before.

  
Keiji wasn’t sure why it was raining in the afterlife, but found he didn’t care as his kissed his lover.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic could alternatively be titled 'the fic i nearly cried while writing' or just 'suffering'
> 
> my partner said this was one of the best things i've written so i really hope it's good
> 
> but honestly i did tear up a bit writing this ahhh
> 
> anyways i hope you enjoyed this!! feel free to hmu on tumblr and cry about bokuaka together!! (iwxchxn.tumblr.com)


End file.
